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This book discusses numerous natural compounds that
show promise in the treatment of cancer. It examines
fully what research has told us about them, and it proposes
ways of using them that could significantly increase
their value in cancer treatment beyond what has
previously been demonstrated. To understand the meaning
of this new approach, one needs to see it in the context
of the big picture of cancer research.
We stand at a turning point in the field of cancer chemotherapy.
The last 50 years have been dominated by
drugs that are not highly specific to cancer cells. Being
nonspecific, these drugs also destroy normal cells, and
in the process can cause significant and sometimes
deadly adverse effects. Before long, a new generation of
more powerful but less toxic drugs promises to be available.
These new drugs will target events and processes
that are more specific to cancer cells, and thus they will
not be as harmful to normal cells. This revolution in
therapy is already evident in the laboratory, and within
the next 10 years or so it will become evident in the
clinic. The ability to design and test this new generation
of drugs comes from the many scientific discoveries
made over the last 20 years that allow us to peer into the
workings of a cancer cell at the molecular level. By
seeing more clearly how cancer cells work, we are now
better able to design drugs to halt their proliferation and
spread. This new approach of targeting the mechanisms
by which cancer cells prosper has been called, appropriately,
a mechanism-based approach.
These developments paint a very encouraging picture
for the eventual success of modern medicine in its battle
to defeat cancer. But with such promising drugs on the
horizon, the reader may ask, “Why does it make sense to
turn to the study of natural compounds?” |
